Glorious Artisan Bakery, Spokane’s favorite choice for authentic San Fransisco style sourdough bread.
Building Community & Serving Through BreadClick Here to look at our selection of Artisan Breads
Visit @LIFE MADE GLORIOUS on Facebook
Visit @LIFE MADE GLORIOUS on Instagram
We bake amazing bread. It’s the medium we use to build community - to draw people together.
The tagline of Glorious is: Simple. Natural. Made with Love.
Location: 1516 W. Riverside Avenue, Spokane, Washington, 99201
Phone: (509) 720-7546
Hours: Mon Closed, Tue Closed, Wed 11am - 7pm, Thu 11am - 7pm, Fri 11am - 7pm, Sat 11am - 7pm, Sun 10am-5pm
We believe that bread should be simple, good, and taste incredible. Ya know, kind of like life.
We bake fresh artisan sourdough bread using natural yeast. We love making bread. We are also the first in Spokane to offer ultra-pure extra virgin olive oils and gourmet balsamic vinegars. They're pretty amazing. We supply grocery stores, restaurants and coffee shops in Spokane with our bread, as well as offer it to customers at our location near downtown Spokane, serving authentic artisan sourdough and gluten-free breads. Gourmet olive oils, vinegars, and original seasonings. Baked goods, infused drinks.
Glorious Artisan Bread was created by Leo Walters, who has been dreaming of owning a bakery for over a decade. Working in corporate finance, he took a week off and traveled to the San Francisco Baking Institute because it sounded like fun and he wanted to explore bread making. That single week turned into an obsession, and while he still worked in the corporate world, moving from Kansas City to Seattle and then to Spokane, he couldn't get the dream of owning his own bakery out of his mind.
Sharing his bread in his company break rooms, coworkers would tell him, "you should start your own bakery!" The thought of it terrified him, but Leo took a chance and quit his job.
Beginning at local Farmer's Markets, Glorious started gaining popularity, and soon he was completely selling out of his products within an hour after setting up. At this point he rediscovered a line of Ultra Pure Olive Oils and Balsamic Vinegars that he could offer as the fresh bread was sold, and it turned out to be a crowd-pleaser, too.
So it was kismet when a space became available at the Ladder Building at 1516 W. Riverside Avenue, and Glorious Artisan Bakery found a permanent spot to bake, offer samples of nearly 20 flavors and varieties of Extra Virgin Olive Oils and Balsamic Vinegars, and hold classes on healthy vegan living, cooking, bread making and more.
And more importantly, it's a place for people to gather and to create a community.
Fresh artisan sourdough using natural yeast.
We love making bread.
You can purchase our freshly-made bread at our location near downtown Spokane at 1516 W. Riverside Ave. (inside of the Dormitory Building).
Because we're a small bakery, we tend to bake in cycles and not all of our varieties are available at the same time. Daily bakes include our Rustic Country, Demi Baguettes, Focaccia, Hearty Seed and Gluten Free. The other varieties cycle in and out based on supply & demand.
We urge you to call ahead at (509) 720-7546 to find out what's in the oven that day, and we're happy to take orders for the next day's baking.
We're open Wednesday through Saturday (11am-7pm) and Sunday (10am-5pm). We're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Our customers also include grocery stores, restaurants and coffee shops in Spokane.
Glorious bakes the following varieties of bread: Rustic Country, Demi Baguette, Sourdough Focaccia, Hearty Seed, Artisan Gluten Free, Toasted Sesame, Fig & Fennel, Toasted Walnut and Cranberry, Everything (a everything-bagel type topping).
Glorious also offers custom cooking to area restaurants and cafés, creating custom buns, breads and specialty items based on the chef's design.
In an article by the local newspaper, the Inlander, on my 9, 2019, Chey Scott wrote about the best artisan avocado toast. https://www.inlander.com/spokane/if-millennials-are-to-blame-for-the-artisan-toast-trend-we-should-thank-them-for-these-five-toast-combinations-on-local-menus/Content?oid=17584901
Of the five top examples, Glorious Artisan Bakery supplies the bread for two of them. It's a wonderful example of how Spokane has embraced this bakery, and how local business owners are able to create better offerings for their customers with the help of Glorious Artisan Bakery.
Walters wrote, "if people ask me what I do, I say that I bake amazing rustic bread. I say this with humility and with no sense of vanity or pomp because I honestly don’t know what makes the bread look and taste so incredible - outside of the prayers and blessings I say over it. Technically speaking, I don’t do anything special with the bread. I mean I use a basic recipe, wild yeast like we’ve baked bread with for thousands of years, and standard practices.
These prayers and blessings often take place when I’m feeding the wild yeast culture (named Glorious). I close my eyes, center myself in my heart, and imagine all of the people’s lives that she’ll touch. As I pray, I’m asking God to help create a reality where simplicity, connection, wholesomeness, laughter, love, giving, radiance, joy, peace, calm, beauty, inspiration, and desire fill our days. I see the bread touch people and call them back to a place of simplicity and wholesomeness. I see people as they put a bite into their mouth, close their eyes and revel in the taste - all the while the bread becomes part of their physical makeup and sparks health, inspiration, love, and joy inside of them. I see it drawing people together in connection. I see people setting aside technology and their busy lives to come back to the dinner table - feeling the instinctual pull of community and connection. I watch and a smile spreads across my face as it pulls lovers closer over an intimate dinner.
Science is now starting to catch up with spirituality and prove that our thoughts, feelings, and intentions have power and affect the reality we create for ourselves. And to me, that's Glorious."
In another article in Spokane's The Inlander, on May 16, 2019, writer Chey Scott wrote an article titled "Glorious Artisan Bread owner Leo Walters seeks to create community connections, one loaf at a time.
https://www.inlander.com/spokane/glorious-artisan-bread-owner-leo-walters-seeks-to-create-community-connections-one-loaf-at-a-time/Content?oid=17621997
Choosing bread was a big leap of faith for Leo Walters.
The former engineer-turned-breadmaker saw that faith bountifully rewarded, however, when Glorious Artisan Bakery opened in April in a historic building on the edge of Browne's Addition.
There, Walters and a small team bake rustic, naturally leavened loaves, which can be paired with a variety of fresh, extra virgin olive oils and gourmet balsamic vinegars also sold there.
"A year ago I was with my boyfriend and making a meal, and discovered I had some cooking skills. From there I started to connect the dots of following your passion and bliss, and that felt right to me," Walters recalls. "It's bread, but I have this yearning and desire to help and serve people, and bread is the medium to do that."
Before opening Glorious' bakery and retail space, Walters rented kitchen space at Madeleine's Cafe downtown. He began selling his loaves last summer at area farmers markets, and to some wholesale customers. Many of those early accounts still serve Glorious' bread, including Perry Street Brewing, First Avenue Coffee, Pathfinder Cafe, the Wandering Table and the bakery's current neighbor, Ladder Coffee & Toast.
"It was an incredible reception. I almost always immediately sold out, or within an hour" Walters says of those farmers market days. "It got me to see and think about the impact this was having on people. I knew I baked good bread, but I didn't know, at the time, the instinctive nature that bread has to draw people to the table and commune around something."
Craving that community connection, Walters drew upon his Christian faith and prayed to find the perfect location. He even passed up another space that didn't feel right before discovering the Riverside spot that is now Glorious' home.
There, customers can stop in during later-than-usual retail bakery hours, which Walters intentionally set to cater to those stopping in for a fresh loaf on their way home from school or work. While the bakery is open later, the baking starts early, at 3 am.
Walters' first foray into breadmaking happened about a decade ago, setting him on a path of experimental baking at home and later to attend a class on sourdough at the San Francisco Baking Institute. Between then and last year, however, he says he put his breadmaking passion "on the shelf" for about five years.
Each day, Glorious stocks its bread rack with its signature rustic country bread ($9) and hearty seed bread ($10), the latter made with toasted sunflower, pumpkin and flax seed. Specialty loaves ($10) rotate weekly based on the season, such as a toasted walnut-cranberry, fig and fennel and toasted sesame. Glorious also bakes a gluten-free loaf ($10) using brown rice and sorghum flours.
"What makes our bread different is that we use not only this wild yeast, but a really long fermentation of three days, which adds a lot of character to the bread including the crust," Walters explains. "We're big crust fans. A lot of flavor is added to the bread itself" from the crust.
To complement its bread, Glorious stocks a collection of ultra-fresh extra virgin olive oils and gourmet vinegars from California-based Veronica Foods, which imports both products from countries around the world. In addition to its affordable prices, Walters chose to partner with the importer because of its reputation for buying only the freshest and purest olive oils in an industry that's often unregulated, leading to the sale of cheap product marked as olive oil but that's been diluted with cheaper oils.
Sampling Glorious' bread, oils and vinegars is heavily encouraged, and Walters daily sets out bowls of fresh bread and samples for dipping. Both oil and vinegar can be purchased in 200 or 60 milliliter bottles for $13 and $5, respectively. A sampler pack of the 60 milliliter bottles, in any combination, is $18.
Glorious currently carries more than a dozen olive oils and balsamic vinegars, many of which are infused with other ingredients. Vinegar choices include Sicilian lemon, cranberry pear, traditional, fig, vanilla, lavender, cara cara orange-vanilla, blackberry ginger and a soon-to-arrive maple.
For the oils, Glorious offers Tuscan herb, blood orange, butter and chaabani (a dried red pepper), along with non-infused oils made from the Picual, Chiquitita and Hojiblanca olive varieties. Flavor profile cards for each oil and vinegar can help customers envision how to cook or pair each with specific dishes and ingredients beyond bread.
"We're very big on the culinary journey and how people can explore the oils and vinegars and rustic bread and spreads we make to go along with it," Walters notes. "We set out to create an environment of walking into grandma's kitchen."
In the near future, Walters hopes to offer tasting classes and other events at Glorious centered around its bread, oil and vinegar. He's also a big proponent of olive oil's health benefits, including anti-inflammatory properties and disease prevention.
"In Italy there is a culture of drinking it like a fruit juice," Walters says. "I hope to help change that mindset and perception of how its incorporated into our diet." ♦
Glorious Artisan Bakery • 1516 W. Riverside • Open Wed-Sat 11 am-7 pm, Sun 10 am-5 pm • howglorious.com • 720-7546
In addition to bread, Glorious serves cookies, energy bars, biscuits, whole wheat biscuits, teff biscuits, jams, jellies, olives, chutney, truffle salt, peanut butters, nut butters, vegan cheese.
The rich and complex flavors of our breads are created through a wild yeast culture (aptly nicknamed Glorious!). In addition, we use high-quality ingredients and a long fermentation process to evoke more flavor from the grain and add a deeper richness to the crust.
This history of bread
The oven developed with the first food human knew how to cook: grilled cereals, then flat breads and finally leavened bread. Leavened bread is said to have been invented by accident some 5000-6000 years ago in the Near East: flat bread dough which had been put aside from some time began to naturally ferment and rise before it was cooked!
Since then, through different periods and cultures, humans have continuously improved techniques for cooking bread, eventually creating the wood oven we know today.
These civilisations were responsible for the first bread ovens (around 5000 years ago). A large clay pot was placed upside down over the hearth and coals. After the clay pot was heated the flat bread or dough was placed inside and cooked for the first time with heat from all sides. This basic oven was later improved by the development of the first “Tandur” oven, still used today, notably in Pakistan to cook the famous “Naan” bread. These ovens were made from clay and straw and shaped like a waist high, tapered, open-topped barrel. Fire and live coals in the barrel heated the oven. Baking bread was a well organised activity which took place in real bakeries and bread was so important it was used as payment in kind for salaries and taxes.
It was the Greeks, masters of art and bakery, who invented the “modern” wood oven which has hardly changed in 2000 years. They had the idea of “laying down” the Egyptian Tandur oven to position it on the ground with the opening in front. This way, the oven was more practical and used less wood. Soon, they added an oven floor where the fire could be built. Finally, they came up with the bright idea of removing the fire at the end of cooking to cook the food with waves of heat.
These Greek techniques were imported by the Romans and applied, developed and exported through the Roman Empire. Although the Romans did not bring any major changes to the Greek oven design, they did introduce a new basic material, earthenware bricks.
What is artisan bread?
Artisan bread is a term that has no absolute definition but refers to a style of short shelf-life bread that is usually offered unpackaged (in baskets) and consumed immediately after baking for maximum freshness.
The term artisan bread conjures the image of artisan bakers who are masters of their craft, shaping breads by hand and only using the basic bread ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt, and most importantly time. This is a stark contrast to the standardized, repeatable and industrially-produced breads that are often found in the supermarket bread aisle.
Usually produced in small factories, artisan bread is characterized by being:
Made by hand using traditional processing techniques
Higher water absorption levels
Lean formulations
Pre-ferments
Longer fermentation times compared to commercial pan bread and rolls
Artisan breads do not have a Standard of Identity set by the FDA. Therefore, there is no absolute definition of what ingredients and processing conditions to use and what the finished product characteristics should be.
This category of bread is becoming more important in the baking industry as customers are looking for products with different and creative designs, maximum freshness and clean labels.
Comparison of artisan to commercial breads
Flour: “True artisan” breads use wheat flours with a lower protein content (10.0–10.5% on a 14.0% moisture basis) but superior quality such as hard red winter wheats to produce chewy texture and open grain without toughness. Commercially produced artisan bread often requires higher protein flours to withstand dough machinability.
High water amounts: the resulting higher hydration doughs will be slack and sticky and can only be handled by hand or specialized equipment.
Biochemical leavening: baker’s yeast, wild yeast, naturally occurring lactic and acetic bacteria. Longer fermentation times of these microorganisms provide unique flavor, aroma and volume development at lower concentrations.
Preservatives: artisan bread doughs are fermented to low pH’s (4–5) which acts as a natural preservative.
Processing conditions:
Fermentation: bulk for about 24 hours at room conditions of T°/RH.
Mixing: shorter mixing time due to lower tolerance/stability of the low protein dough and its high acidity.
Makeup (dividing, rounding, moulding): application of very gentle stress and strains on the dough piece to preserve the open cell structure and gassiness.
Proofing: intermediate to long proofing/resting times to allow the dough to recover from mechanical work.
Dusting flour: higher amounts to reduce stickiness and improve handling of high absorption doughs. It can also provide distinctive appeal to baked goods.
Baking in hearth ovens loaded with peel board: injection of steam for 20–35% of bake time. Time/temperature profile depends on scaling weight, size and desired crust of finished product.
More articles on Bread History and Artisan Bread
http://www.multigrainsbakeries.com/49.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread
https://www.organicemporium.co.za/news/history-on-artisan-bread/
https://bakerpedia.com/processes/artisan-bread/
https://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-bread
https://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Bread-History-America/
https://www.aaccnet.org/publications/cfw/2018/mar-apr/Pages/CFW-63-2-0056.aspx
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-rise-of-artisan-bread-l3vum9/
https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2015/10/16/american-baking-decades-1990-1999/
Search terms people use when looking for Glorious Artisan Bread
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Building Community & Serving Through BreadClick Here to look at our selection of Artisan Breads
Visit @LIFE MADE GLORIOUS on Facebook
Visit @LIFE MADE GLORIOUS on Instagram
We bake amazing bread. It’s the medium we use to build community - to draw people together.
The tagline of Glorious is: Simple. Natural. Made with Love.
Location: 1516 W. Riverside Avenue, Spokane, Washington, 99201
Phone: (509) 720-7546
Hours: Mon Closed, Tue Closed, Wed 11am - 7pm, Thu 11am - 7pm, Fri 11am - 7pm, Sat 11am - 7pm, Sun 10am-5pm
We believe that bread should be simple, good, and taste incredible. Ya know, kind of like life.
We bake fresh artisan sourdough bread using natural yeast. We love making bread. We are also the first in Spokane to offer ultra-pure extra virgin olive oils and gourmet balsamic vinegars. They're pretty amazing. We supply grocery stores, restaurants and coffee shops in Spokane with our bread, as well as offer it to customers at our location near downtown Spokane, serving authentic artisan sourdough and gluten-free breads. Gourmet olive oils, vinegars, and original seasonings. Baked goods, infused drinks.
Glorious Artisan Bread was created by Leo Walters, who has been dreaming of owning a bakery for over a decade. Working in corporate finance, he took a week off and traveled to the San Francisco Baking Institute because it sounded like fun and he wanted to explore bread making. That single week turned into an obsession, and while he still worked in the corporate world, moving from Kansas City to Seattle and then to Spokane, he couldn't get the dream of owning his own bakery out of his mind.
Sharing his bread in his company break rooms, coworkers would tell him, "you should start your own bakery!" The thought of it terrified him, but Leo took a chance and quit his job.
Beginning at local Farmer's Markets, Glorious started gaining popularity, and soon he was completely selling out of his products within an hour after setting up. At this point he rediscovered a line of Ultra Pure Olive Oils and Balsamic Vinegars that he could offer as the fresh bread was sold, and it turned out to be a crowd-pleaser, too.
So it was kismet when a space became available at the Ladder Building at 1516 W. Riverside Avenue, and Glorious Artisan Bakery found a permanent spot to bake, offer samples of nearly 20 flavors and varieties of Extra Virgin Olive Oils and Balsamic Vinegars, and hold classes on healthy vegan living, cooking, bread making and more.
And more importantly, it's a place for people to gather and to create a community.
Fresh artisan sourdough using natural yeast.
We love making bread.
You can purchase our freshly-made bread at our location near downtown Spokane at 1516 W. Riverside Ave. (inside of the Dormitory Building).
Because we're a small bakery, we tend to bake in cycles and not all of our varieties are available at the same time. Daily bakes include our Rustic Country, Demi Baguettes, Focaccia, Hearty Seed and Gluten Free. The other varieties cycle in and out based on supply & demand.
We urge you to call ahead at (509) 720-7546 to find out what's in the oven that day, and we're happy to take orders for the next day's baking.
We're open Wednesday through Saturday (11am-7pm) and Sunday (10am-5pm). We're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Our customers also include grocery stores, restaurants and coffee shops in Spokane.
Glorious bakes the following varieties of bread: Rustic Country, Demi Baguette, Sourdough Focaccia, Hearty Seed, Artisan Gluten Free, Toasted Sesame, Fig & Fennel, Toasted Walnut and Cranberry, Everything (a everything-bagel type topping).
Glorious also offers custom cooking to area restaurants and cafés, creating custom buns, breads and specialty items based on the chef's design.
In an article by the local newspaper, the Inlander, on my 9, 2019, Chey Scott wrote about the best artisan avocado toast. https://www.inlander.com/spokane/if-millennials-are-to-blame-for-the-artisan-toast-trend-we-should-thank-them-for-these-five-toast-combinations-on-local-menus/Content?oid=17584901
Of the five top examples, Glorious Artisan Bakery supplies the bread for two of them. It's a wonderful example of how Spokane has embraced this bakery, and how local business owners are able to create better offerings for their customers with the help of Glorious Artisan Bakery.
Walters wrote, "if people ask me what I do, I say that I bake amazing rustic bread. I say this with humility and with no sense of vanity or pomp because I honestly don’t know what makes the bread look and taste so incredible - outside of the prayers and blessings I say over it. Technically speaking, I don’t do anything special with the bread. I mean I use a basic recipe, wild yeast like we’ve baked bread with for thousands of years, and standard practices.
These prayers and blessings often take place when I’m feeding the wild yeast culture (named Glorious). I close my eyes, center myself in my heart, and imagine all of the people’s lives that she’ll touch. As I pray, I’m asking God to help create a reality where simplicity, connection, wholesomeness, laughter, love, giving, radiance, joy, peace, calm, beauty, inspiration, and desire fill our days. I see the bread touch people and call them back to a place of simplicity and wholesomeness. I see people as they put a bite into their mouth, close their eyes and revel in the taste - all the while the bread becomes part of their physical makeup and sparks health, inspiration, love, and joy inside of them. I see it drawing people together in connection. I see people setting aside technology and their busy lives to come back to the dinner table - feeling the instinctual pull of community and connection. I watch and a smile spreads across my face as it pulls lovers closer over an intimate dinner.
Science is now starting to catch up with spirituality and prove that our thoughts, feelings, and intentions have power and affect the reality we create for ourselves. And to me, that's Glorious."
In another article in Spokane's The Inlander, on May 16, 2019, writer Chey Scott wrote an article titled "Glorious Artisan Bread owner Leo Walters seeks to create community connections, one loaf at a time.
https://www.inlander.com/spokane/glorious-artisan-bread-owner-leo-walters-seeks-to-create-community-connections-one-loaf-at-a-time/Content?oid=17621997
Choosing bread was a big leap of faith for Leo Walters.
The former engineer-turned-breadmaker saw that faith bountifully rewarded, however, when Glorious Artisan Bakery opened in April in a historic building on the edge of Browne's Addition.
There, Walters and a small team bake rustic, naturally leavened loaves, which can be paired with a variety of fresh, extra virgin olive oils and gourmet balsamic vinegars also sold there.
"A year ago I was with my boyfriend and making a meal, and discovered I had some cooking skills. From there I started to connect the dots of following your passion and bliss, and that felt right to me," Walters recalls. "It's bread, but I have this yearning and desire to help and serve people, and bread is the medium to do that."
Before opening Glorious' bakery and retail space, Walters rented kitchen space at Madeleine's Cafe downtown. He began selling his loaves last summer at area farmers markets, and to some wholesale customers. Many of those early accounts still serve Glorious' bread, including Perry Street Brewing, First Avenue Coffee, Pathfinder Cafe, the Wandering Table and the bakery's current neighbor, Ladder Coffee & Toast.
"It was an incredible reception. I almost always immediately sold out, or within an hour" Walters says of those farmers market days. "It got me to see and think about the impact this was having on people. I knew I baked good bread, but I didn't know, at the time, the instinctive nature that bread has to draw people to the table and commune around something."
Craving that community connection, Walters drew upon his Christian faith and prayed to find the perfect location. He even passed up another space that didn't feel right before discovering the Riverside spot that is now Glorious' home.
There, customers can stop in during later-than-usual retail bakery hours, which Walters intentionally set to cater to those stopping in for a fresh loaf on their way home from school or work. While the bakery is open later, the baking starts early, at 3 am.
Walters' first foray into breadmaking happened about a decade ago, setting him on a path of experimental baking at home and later to attend a class on sourdough at the San Francisco Baking Institute. Between then and last year, however, he says he put his breadmaking passion "on the shelf" for about five years.
Each day, Glorious stocks its bread rack with its signature rustic country bread ($9) and hearty seed bread ($10), the latter made with toasted sunflower, pumpkin and flax seed. Specialty loaves ($10) rotate weekly based on the season, such as a toasted walnut-cranberry, fig and fennel and toasted sesame. Glorious also bakes a gluten-free loaf ($10) using brown rice and sorghum flours.
"What makes our bread different is that we use not only this wild yeast, but a really long fermentation of three days, which adds a lot of character to the bread including the crust," Walters explains. "We're big crust fans. A lot of flavor is added to the bread itself" from the crust.
To complement its bread, Glorious stocks a collection of ultra-fresh extra virgin olive oils and gourmet vinegars from California-based Veronica Foods, which imports both products from countries around the world. In addition to its affordable prices, Walters chose to partner with the importer because of its reputation for buying only the freshest and purest olive oils in an industry that's often unregulated, leading to the sale of cheap product marked as olive oil but that's been diluted with cheaper oils.
Sampling Glorious' bread, oils and vinegars is heavily encouraged, and Walters daily sets out bowls of fresh bread and samples for dipping. Both oil and vinegar can be purchased in 200 or 60 milliliter bottles for $13 and $5, respectively. A sampler pack of the 60 milliliter bottles, in any combination, is $18.
Glorious currently carries more than a dozen olive oils and balsamic vinegars, many of which are infused with other ingredients. Vinegar choices include Sicilian lemon, cranberry pear, traditional, fig, vanilla, lavender, cara cara orange-vanilla, blackberry ginger and a soon-to-arrive maple.
For the oils, Glorious offers Tuscan herb, blood orange, butter and chaabani (a dried red pepper), along with non-infused oils made from the Picual, Chiquitita and Hojiblanca olive varieties. Flavor profile cards for each oil and vinegar can help customers envision how to cook or pair each with specific dishes and ingredients beyond bread.
"We're very big on the culinary journey and how people can explore the oils and vinegars and rustic bread and spreads we make to go along with it," Walters notes. "We set out to create an environment of walking into grandma's kitchen."
In the near future, Walters hopes to offer tasting classes and other events at Glorious centered around its bread, oil and vinegar. He's also a big proponent of olive oil's health benefits, including anti-inflammatory properties and disease prevention.
"In Italy there is a culture of drinking it like a fruit juice," Walters says. "I hope to help change that mindset and perception of how its incorporated into our diet." ♦
Glorious Artisan Bakery • 1516 W. Riverside • Open Wed-Sat 11 am-7 pm, Sun 10 am-5 pm • howglorious.com • 720-7546
In addition to bread, Glorious serves cookies, energy bars, biscuits, whole wheat biscuits, teff biscuits, jams, jellies, olives, chutney, truffle salt, peanut butters, nut butters, vegan cheese.
The rich and complex flavors of our breads are created through a wild yeast culture (aptly nicknamed Glorious!). In addition, we use high-quality ingredients and a long fermentation process to evoke more flavor from the grain and add a deeper richness to the crust.
This history of bread
The oven developed with the first food human knew how to cook: grilled cereals, then flat breads and finally leavened bread. Leavened bread is said to have been invented by accident some 5000-6000 years ago in the Near East: flat bread dough which had been put aside from some time began to naturally ferment and rise before it was cooked!
Since then, through different periods and cultures, humans have continuously improved techniques for cooking bread, eventually creating the wood oven we know today.
These civilisations were responsible for the first bread ovens (around 5000 years ago). A large clay pot was placed upside down over the hearth and coals. After the clay pot was heated the flat bread or dough was placed inside and cooked for the first time with heat from all sides. This basic oven was later improved by the development of the first “Tandur” oven, still used today, notably in Pakistan to cook the famous “Naan” bread. These ovens were made from clay and straw and shaped like a waist high, tapered, open-topped barrel. Fire and live coals in the barrel heated the oven. Baking bread was a well organised activity which took place in real bakeries and bread was so important it was used as payment in kind for salaries and taxes.
It was the Greeks, masters of art and bakery, who invented the “modern” wood oven which has hardly changed in 2000 years. They had the idea of “laying down” the Egyptian Tandur oven to position it on the ground with the opening in front. This way, the oven was more practical and used less wood. Soon, they added an oven floor where the fire could be built. Finally, they came up with the bright idea of removing the fire at the end of cooking to cook the food with waves of heat.
These Greek techniques were imported by the Romans and applied, developed and exported through the Roman Empire. Although the Romans did not bring any major changes to the Greek oven design, they did introduce a new basic material, earthenware bricks.
What is artisan bread?
Artisan bread is a term that has no absolute definition but refers to a style of short shelf-life bread that is usually offered unpackaged (in baskets) and consumed immediately after baking for maximum freshness.
The term artisan bread conjures the image of artisan bakers who are masters of their craft, shaping breads by hand and only using the basic bread ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt, and most importantly time. This is a stark contrast to the standardized, repeatable and industrially-produced breads that are often found in the supermarket bread aisle.
Usually produced in small factories, artisan bread is characterized by being:
Made by hand using traditional processing techniques
Higher water absorption levels
Lean formulations
Pre-ferments
Longer fermentation times compared to commercial pan bread and rolls
Artisan breads do not have a Standard of Identity set by the FDA. Therefore, there is no absolute definition of what ingredients and processing conditions to use and what the finished product characteristics should be.
This category of bread is becoming more important in the baking industry as customers are looking for products with different and creative designs, maximum freshness and clean labels.
Comparison of artisan to commercial breads
Flour: “True artisan” breads use wheat flours with a lower protein content (10.0–10.5% on a 14.0% moisture basis) but superior quality such as hard red winter wheats to produce chewy texture and open grain without toughness. Commercially produced artisan bread often requires higher protein flours to withstand dough machinability.
High water amounts: the resulting higher hydration doughs will be slack and sticky and can only be handled by hand or specialized equipment.
Biochemical leavening: baker’s yeast, wild yeast, naturally occurring lactic and acetic bacteria. Longer fermentation times of these microorganisms provide unique flavor, aroma and volume development at lower concentrations.
Preservatives: artisan bread doughs are fermented to low pH’s (4–5) which acts as a natural preservative.
Processing conditions:
Fermentation: bulk for about 24 hours at room conditions of T°/RH.
Mixing: shorter mixing time due to lower tolerance/stability of the low protein dough and its high acidity.
Makeup (dividing, rounding, moulding): application of very gentle stress and strains on the dough piece to preserve the open cell structure and gassiness.
Proofing: intermediate to long proofing/resting times to allow the dough to recover from mechanical work.
Dusting flour: higher amounts to reduce stickiness and improve handling of high absorption doughs. It can also provide distinctive appeal to baked goods.
Baking in hearth ovens loaded with peel board: injection of steam for 20–35% of bake time. Time/temperature profile depends on scaling weight, size and desired crust of finished product.
More articles on Bread History and Artisan Bread
http://www.multigrainsbakeries.com/49.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread
https://www.organicemporium.co.za/news/history-on-artisan-bread/
https://bakerpedia.com/processes/artisan-bread/
https://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-bread
https://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Bread-History-America/
https://www.aaccnet.org/publications/cfw/2018/mar-apr/Pages/CFW-63-2-0056.aspx
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-rise-of-artisan-bread-l3vum9/
https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2015/10/16/american-baking-decades-1990-1999/
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